PEMBROKE, Ontario (LifeSiteNews) –– A discussion of the ways in which the United Nations goals are breaking municipal laws and violating property rights will be held later this month.
The two-hour meeting, entitled “The Solution to Globalism is Localism,” will be held on Wednesday, November 20, 2024, from 7 PM to 9 PM at the Rankin Culture and Recreation Centre in Pembroke, Ontario. Attendees will be addressed by both Maggie Hope Braun, the founder of Kicking International Council out of Local Environmental Initiatives (KICLEI), and Donna Burns, a vice president of the Ontario Landowners’ Association.
Maggie Hope Braun told LifeSiteNews via email that the meeting will address how global agendas, “particularly UN climate initiatives” are reshaping municipal priorities and policies across Canada.
“One of the primary goals of our localism initiative is to empower municipalities to make decisions based on the unique needs and values of their communities, rather than implementing one-size-fits-all global mandates,” Braun wrote. “By discussing key concerns diplomatically and openly, we hope to encourage greater transparency and foster a renewed focus on community-based priorities, underscoring the importance of strategic civic engagement at the local level.”
Braun is particularly concerned about local governments feeling pressured to adopt policies set by international organizations rather than responding to local priorities.
“Programs aligned with UN climate goals often come with strings attached, especially regarding federal funding, which can compel municipalities to follow UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to access resources,” she wrote. “This reliance can dilute local autonomy, making it difficult for municipalities to allocate budgets according to their own needs, as funding is often tied to specific climate-related expenditures—like electric fleets—that may not suit every community’s practical or economic realities.”
She added that these programs often introduce costly mandates, increase taxes, and, in some cases, affect privacy through the use of data-monitoring smart technologies, all of which can strain communities financially and socially.
“Canadians are beginning to feel these pressures, and many are questioning the long-term impacts on their rights, privacy, and economic well-being,” Braun stated.
She wants to protect Canada from international interests and ensure residents have a say in the shaping of their communities’ future.
“I believe local governments need balanced information so they can prioritize their communities’ needs over international agendas,” she wrote. “Municipal councils should serve as a buffer between their residents and external lobbying interests. They have a duty to ensure that decisions reflect local values and practical needs rather than advancing global or corporate objectives. Development schemes, particularly those encouraging centralized control over land use—as seen in some UN policies—must be thoroughly scrutinized.”
‘This is private land; they don’t have the authority to do that’
Donna Burns is passionate about educating residents, their representatives, and civil servants about existing legislation that protects ordinary folk from government (not to mention United Nations) overreach.
“My objective is to get the people (property owners, municipal staff members and municipal council members) to understand our democracy and the legislation that was created that protects and surrounds it,” Donna Burns told LifeSiteNews. “This is knowledge that has been hidden from us for many, many years which has made us vulnerable in having our rights and freedoms eroded away from us in such a way that we have never realized it.”
A vice-president of the Ontario Landowner’s Association (OLA), Burns is also the president of its Renfrew County chapter, a post she took in 2011. Burns, who has lived in Renfrew County since 1977, told LifeSiteNews that she joined the OLA after hearing of then-Premier Dalton McGinty’s proposal to meter—that is, tax—well-water on private land. Such an undertaking, Burns assured LifeSiteNews, would be illegal—a violation of the Municipal Act, as well as property rights.
Through her research and activism, Burns has discovered that municipalities sometimes create bylaws which are in violation of the Municipal Act, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and even the Constitution.
Unfortunately, not only do municipal governments not read these documents, but ordinary citizens don’t either.
For example, many people do not know that Ontario governments have management of only 87% of the province’s landmass, and they cannot write laws for the land they don’t have authority over—private land, ceded by the Crown. This goes right back to the British Government’s drive to attract immigrants to the country by giving them land.
“When the Crown granted the land to the first settlers, the Crown gave up all rights, title and interest to that land,” she said. “They no longer have any entitlement to it.”
The situation is worsening, Burns believes, as municipal bodies are now using UN climate and environmental goals to usurp landowners’ authority over their land.
“With environmental assessments … they’re trying to tell you that you can’t do this on your land, or you can’t do that on your land,” she said. “But this is private land. They don’t have the authority to do that, but they imply that they do.”
In 2016, the Province of Ontario brought in UN goals under a provincial policy statement, hoping to designate certain land as a “wetland” or “heritage” or “environmentally protected.” Burns went to her local government and said, “Look, you cannot enforce a designation on land that you do not own.”
Burns has advised local landowners to write to Renfrew County saying that they do not give their consent to having designations placed on their private property.
At the November 20 meeting, Burns will be talking about how the United Nations wriggled itself into governance of Ontario municipalities.
She explained to LifeSiteNews that the UN had introduced Agenda 21 for sustainable development, founding the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI), which was later given the less suspicious-sounding name Local Governments for Sustainability. Agenda 21 was renamed “Comprehensive Planning, Growth Management, [and] Smart Growth.”
“The United Nations’ name wasn’t even in there,” she said. “And this is how they tricked your municipalities, your local officials into believing that this was something of Canadian origin.”
“ICLEI is now partnered with the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, and they have a programme called Partners for Climate Protection that’s funded by our Canadian government,” she continued. “They use these funding programmes to push these Green Energy initiatives onto us. All of this is introduced through our local governments—a foreign policy. They don’t realize that it’s foreign interference [meant] to remove our rights and freedoms from us and to erode our property ownership.”
Burns stated that the Green Energy initiatives are making it more and more expensive to own property and that farmers in particular are threatened.